


We Play the Game of Loss

by Inksinger



Series: And In the Springtime We Were Godlike [1]
Category: Warcraft - All Media Types, World of Warcraft
Genre: Fluff, Idiots in Love, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-15
Updated: 2018-11-15
Packaged: 2019-08-23 22:57:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16628060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inksinger/pseuds/Inksinger
Summary: Before everything fell to death and ruin, Dar'khan Drathir was a beloved friend - even if he himself could never quite believe it.





	We Play the Game of Loss

Dar'khan was, in many ways, a great deal like one of the cats that roamed the city - no more a domesticated creature than they were, prone to fits of agitation and listlessness by turns, and ultimately much happier to _give_ affection than he was to receive much of it… so long as no one went looking for it, of course.

It had taken Lor'themar a while to understand that about him; every elf he had ever encountered had something in common with one beast or another, but in Lor'themar’s experience the vast majority were territorial and moody like hawkstriders, or fey and playful like dragonhawks, or calm and poised like lynxes. But lynxes sought out companionship and affection, and dragonhawks outright demanded it. Hawkstriders, by contrast, made it very clear that what company they kept was a matter for the privacy of their own roosts, and not a matter for the general public to witness.

Ranger General Windrunner, for example, was a lynx. Liadrin was a hawkstrider, albeit a gentler one than most.

Galell… Galell was a bird. A small one. A shrike, perhaps.

Dar'khan was the only elf Lor'themar had ever encountered whose behaviors and mannerisms mimicked those of the small, tabby-sized wildcats that humans so often mistook for feral housecats. He was the only elf who was _quietly_ territorial, and who at all times carried himself as though he were a cat bathing in a great splash of sunlight, eyes sharply observant but body moving fluidly, almost lazily - until he grew restless, or until some new thought or discovery roused him to a burst of intense, sometimes frenzied research that reminded Lor'themar of watching a wildcat bat a mouse about in the grass.

Unfortunately, heightened activity usually came with a sharp decline in his situational awareness, and that, in turn, usually resulted in accidental injury or a worsening of the absolute ruin that was Dar'khan's private study.

Perched in a windowsill and watching as Dar'khan managed to knock a chair over with his hip, Lor'themar supposed it was a good thing that at least this time Dar'khan was home to retreat to his study; he had seen the mage stumble through crowded seats with his nose stuck in a journal as he wrote and attempted to walk at the same time. Dar'khan had run into more than a handful of walls that way - to say nothing of the bystanders he ran over or plowed through.

“But if that's the case…”

Lor'themar’s ears pricked. Dar'khan was only mumbling to himself, as usual, but more often than not his mumbling covered the majority of whatever new project he'd become fixated with, and despite his own lack of talent with magic, Lor'themar found it an interesting subject to learn about when he could - even if it meant eavesdropping on Dar'khan's latest fixation.

The mage finally found himself a seat - by nearly falling over it - and hunched over a great stack of parchment with his back to Lor'themar. Soon the sound of a quill skittering across paper filled the air, too frenzied to come from the marks Dar'khan usually made when he drew out diagrams or equations. He must be noting whatever thought had sparked his sudden frenzy.

“If it belongs to nature magic,” Dar'khan muttered, “and the rangers report better communication with the beasts in proximity to the city… fourteen elf-made ley points around the southern wall alone, no wonder, but those are all arcane points, there aren't any…”

He stopped suddenly, head snapping up in a manner again very reminiscent of a cat hearing the breaking of a far-off twig - and then he twisted about in his chair so suddenly that he nearly sent it toppling as he turned and fixed Lor'themar with an uncomfortably intense stare.

“You're a ranger,” he said.

Lor'themar blinked and waited for the mage to continue, only to realize at length that Dar'khan was still half-calculating whatever new theory he'd come up with and likely hadn't realized how vague he was being.

“Er,” Lor'themar said, shifting uneasily as Dar'khan continued to eye him like a piece of meat, “I was the last time I checked, in any event.”

“Perfect.” Dar'khan fairly spat the word, his eyes gleaming eagerly.

The mage turned around again and seemed to attempt to gather his journal and hop to his feet at the same time… only to fumble the journal, knock his inkwell off his desk, and trip and fall over the chair as he dove for the little brass pot.

Lor'themar was on his feet and halfway across the room in the time it took for Dar'khan to drag himself off his stomach and begin to crawl to his hands and knees, and crouched beside him in time to help the magister gather up his scattered stationary.

“Dare I ask what mad scheme you've got in mind this time?” Lor'themar asked as he set the toppled chair back upright.

 _“Mad scheme,”_ Dar'khan said with a snort. “Please, Lor'themar, I'm not one of the leads in those sordid ‘romance’ novels you read. This is real, quantifiable research we're about to conduct, not a romp through a rat-infested crypt filled with the restless spirits of ages past.”

“I _borrowed_ that one from Liadrin,” Lor'themar protested, extending a hand Dar'khan as he rose to his feet. _“She's_ the one with odd taste. _My_ library is full of wholesome stories where the only ghosts are metaphorical.”

Dar'khan ignored his proffered hand and stood in a swift, fluid motion that put most of the younger rangers to shame, and raised one dark eyebrow at Lor'themar as he clutched his journal close to his chest.

“The lack of sexually promiscuous skeletons in your smut collection hardly qualifies it for any awards for literary excellence,” Dar'khan informed him primly. “Nor _you_ for any accolades as a passion of the arts, for that matter. Give me my inkwell,” he added in the same breath, flapping a hand at Lor'themar.

Lor'themar frowned and pressed the inkwell into his hand. “They aren't _that_ bad,” he argued. “Just because you don't hold much to smut…”

“Lor'themar.” Dar'khan looked very seriously up at him. _“The Ranger's Bow?”_

“Largely satirical and lighthearted,” Lor'themar responded.

“I see,” Dar'khan intoned. “Then I suppose _Submit to the Huntmaster_ is meant to be historical commentary? Or perhaps political critique?”

“Sorry, are we going to spend the afternoon discussing my taste in romantic literature?” Lor'themar asked, feeling a bit nettled now. “Because if I recall correctly, you seemed to have some new bit of research to conduct.”

“You realize, I trust, that changing the subject so gracelessly is tantamount to an admission of defeat,” Dar'khan said. His narrow chin raised just a hair higher than was strictly necessary for such a small victory, and his eyes grew smugly half-lidded as he smiled pertly at Lor'themar.

Right, then. That did it.

Lor'themar swept down and had Dar'khan around the waist before the shorter man had time to dodge away. The fact that Dar'khan was also about a stone lighter than Lor'themar made it a simple thing to haul the magister over his shoulder like a sack of flour - though Dar'khan was significantly noisier and more mobile than any foodstuff Lor'themar could recall having encountered.

 _“Put me down!”_ Dar'khan demanded, kicking his feet emphatically. “I am _not_ some spent little damsel for you to abscond with, you uncivilized heathen!”

“I don't seem to recall you complaining this much last time,” Lor'themar said, grinning as Dar'khan turned to scowl murderously at him.

 _“Last_ time,” Dar'khan spat. “The last time you flung me over your shoulder, I was unconscious after teleporting _all four_ of us away from those damned trolls. You're _welcome,_ by the way,” he added imperiously, “and you may _thank_ me by _putting me down.”_

“Are you going to keep digging at me over my collection of pornography?” Lor'themar asked, bouncing his shoulder under Dar'khan for emphasis.

“Oh, you overgrown brat--” Dar'khan squawked as Lor'themar bounced his shoulder again. _“Fine,_ Light damn you, I'll leave you and your vices alone, you great blond beast! _Put me down_ before I set your ears aflame!”

Lor'themar rolled his eyes, but nevertheless crouched low and let Dar'khan scramble off his shoulder. Teasing was one thing, but Lor'themar tried not to make a habit out of antagonizing magi to the point of violence - and besides, he was rather proud of the fact that his ears were both still sleek and whole. Even Halduron couldn't boast as much: his left ear tip sported a tiny nick along the outer edge, though it was difficult to spot without standing practically on top of the man.

 _“Thank_ you,” Dar'khan snapped, brushing himself off with the hand not currently engaged in holding onto his journal and inkwell. “Now, if you're _quite_ done making an ass of yourself, I do in fact need your assistance with a new bit of research - provided you can remain on task for a few minutes,” he added with a glare.

“I'll do my best,” Lor'themar said, fighting down the urge to grin again at the smaller man's imperious tone.

“Good.” Dar'khan sniffed, then turned and swiped up a fresh quill from a drawer in his desk. With a final, withering look at Lor'themar, the magister turned on his heel and swept away towards the door. “Let's be off, then. There's a spot near the Shepherd's Gate that I'd like to study in a bit more detail, and I'll need your help to do it.”

“What - am I meant to keep the dragonhawks off you?” Lor'themar asked, following close on his heels. It was the height of spring - or the time of year that was spring for the rest of Azeroth's northern hemisphere, in any event - and the latest batch of dragonhawk hatchlings had begun to emerge in the safety of the roosts scattered throughout the Eversong. As a result, the adult dragonhawks - particularly the males - had become significantly more aggressive in the defense of their roosts and young, and were already dive-bombing travelers on the roads that branched through the woods. Keeping such attacks to a minimum was among the responsibilities assigned to the youngest recruits of the Ranger Corps, but any ranger worth his salt was more than capable of convincing a few angry tiercels to overlook the presence of a few elves in their territory.

But Dar'khan shot him another dirty look over his shoulder as they stepped out into the hall.

“No,” the mage said, “I don't need you to chase the local fauna--”

He stopped walking as abruptly as he cut himself off, leaving Lor'themar the fraction of a second to cut his last step short and twist to one side before he ran the other man over.

“A little warning would have been nice,” Lor'themar grumbled, though Dar'khan didn't seem to be listening.

“Well… I suppose the hatchlings are starting to hatch,” he said, tipping his dark head to the side. “The older dragonhawks are always such a nuisance this time of year.”

Lor'themar bit back the quip that threatened to spill out, instead folding his arms across his chest and waiting for Dar'khan to finish his train of thought on his own. He wasn't at all sure he liked the way the mage's ears were twitching at the moment; usually, when they flicked about this restlessly, it was because Dar'khan was in the middle of convincing himself to do something stupid in the name of arcane discovery.

“You know, this experiment of mine just became much easier to carry out,” Dar'khan said after another moment. “You're going to need to interact with the local wildlife either way; if we're being harried by dragonhawks all the while, so much the better!”

He smiled delightedly up at Lor'themar, then turned and all but pranced away down the hall, once again leaving Lor'themar to catch up.

“You want me to help you with… what, exactly?” Lor'themar asked, keeping himself firmly at Dar'khan's shoulder as they walked. _“Besides_ another experiment likely to result in serious injury or the breaking of multiple laws and ordinances, I mean.”

“Oh, please,” Dar'khan snorted, “you exaggerate. My studies rarely, if ever, result in serious bodily injury.”

“You've had to be treated for second- and third-degree burns so frequently in the last three months that Liadrin threatened to break your hands if it happens again before Winter's Veil,” Lor'themar reminded him.

“And the only laws I've ever broken were all largely superficial and outdated, anyway,” Dar'khan continued over the top of him. “This is _magic,_ Lor'themar. It doesn't follow mortal-made laws; it _creates_ laws for mortals to decipher and quantify.”

“You still haven't told me what you need my help for,” Lor'themar said, though looking at the dreamy, half-wild look of ecstasy on the mage's face, he didn't hold out much hope that he would actually get an answer. Dar'khan was all but impossible to communicate with once he lost himself to the wonders of the arcane.

Dar'khan hummed a low, thoughtful note - and then, to Lor'themar's surprise, actually responded: “There is a veritable cavalcade of reports and rumors surrounding the ley points near the southern wall of Silvermoon City. Specifically, the rangers stationed there report a marked increase in the strength and efficacy of their more magically-inclined activities.”

“That shouldn't be,” Lor'themar said with a frown. “The magic we employ isn't arcane in nature - it's much closer to druidic magic.”

“Exactly,” Dar'khan said with a sharp snap of his fingers. “And yet, the reports are all consistent, and no one else among the Magisterium has been able to explain _why.”_

“I wouldn't imagine so,” Lor'themar said. “Rangers and magi don't tend to mix well, and if one wants to study the other, there needs to be a level of cohesion between them, if not trust.”

“Which is why I need your help, Lor'themar.” Dar'khan came to a much smoother stop this time, and again treated the taller man to a hard, serious stare. _“We_ trust each other, you and I, do we not?”

His question was blasé enough in its tone, but his features were harder than they should be, and for the briefest instant Lor'themar thought he saw something small and brittle flash behind the arcane gleam of Dar'khan's eyes.

Not for the first time, Lor'themar was reminded of how very little he still knew of Dar'khan's life before their shared experience in the dungeons of the Amani had forged the beginnings of the bond they now shared. It had been nearly two years since that day, and in that time Liadrin and Galell had opened up until it seemed he had known these two all his life - but not Dar'khan, who offered little if anything at all of himself beyond what could already be observed, and flinched from any questions regarding his past like a cat to ice water.

Lor'themar had learned very early on to seek no answers unless Dar'khan opened the conversation of his own volition… but it didn't stop him from wondering, at times like this, what on earth the brunet had lived through that had made him so standoffish, when to Lor'themar it was as plain as day that he desperately wanted the closeness the rest of their little group shared amongst themselves.

The brittleness vanished from Dar'khan's eyes nearly in the next breath, and if he wasn't standing right in front of the man, Lor'themar would have sighed to see the moment of near-transparency flicker away once more. But Dar'khan was never one for vulnerability, and so the rare moments when his walls came down were almost certainly the result of complacency, and not a conscious choice. Drawing Dar'khan's attention to it, even by so innocuous an action, would only cause the man to wall himself up even more stubbornly than he did now.

“I certainly trust you,” Lor'themar said instead, clapping Dar'khan on the shoulder hard enough to jostle the mage and so hide the tightness of his grin.

“And I you,” Dar'khan answered, looking thoroughly disgruntled again as he steadied himself under Lor'themar's hand. “When you aren't attempting to pummel me into a fine red paste, in any event.”

Still, he took a moment longer than usual to pull away, and when he did there was an odd reluctance in the lines of his body. It was a small thing, perhaps, but with Dar'khan any bit of progress was a victory worth celebrating.

“Now,” Dar'khan said, visibly seeming to pull himself together again, “The test I seek to run should be simple enough: All you have to do is interact with the beasts of the Eversong Wood at various locations, some near ley points and others well clear of their range of effect. It might take several trips over the course of the next few weeks,” he added, glancing over his shoulder as he lead Lor'themar out into the streets of northern Silvermoon's lower promenade, where many of the kingdom's lower nobility were afforded large townhouses that faced outward towards the wide, magically defended gates and the ocean beyond.

“That shouldn't be a problem,” Lor'themar said, carefully sidestepping a pair of noblewomen too lost in their gossiping to move aside.

“I should hope not,” Dar'khan said. “I may also need you to ask some of your colleagues to act as additional subjects, to widen the range of my study.”

Lor'themar opened his mouth to agree a second time, only to stop and seriously consider what Dar'khan was suggesting.

It was no exaggeration to say that the rangers and magi of Quel'Thalas were unfriendly at best with each other. The magi embraced the arcane arts and the study thereof with a relentless, almost reverent fervor, and many looked down on those among their kind who lacked the talent, mindset, or desire to do the same. In their turn, the rangers by and large preferred to use magic only as a last resort in order to protect the lands they roamed from becoming irrevocably changed or damaged by an oversaturation of arcane energies; when they _did_ use magic, it was of a sort that worked _with_ nature and followed its laws, rather than working against or in spite of it. Because of that, most magi catalogued the rangers’ magic as coarse and savage, which in turn egged the rangers on into retaliation, and as a result the two groups were nearly impossible to convince to work harmoniously together without the weight of an order from above to use as leverage.

On top of that, there was the more immediate issue of… Dar'khan.

Dar'khan, the quintessential magus, prim and self-assured and supremely unimpressed by those who undertook work that he found frivolous or dirty. At his most guarded, the man frequently came across as arrogant and snobbish, and while he was by no means unusual in coloration for a high elf, his dark hair, the ashen tan of his skin, and the fine, proud features that marked him as the son of a noble family taken all together made an arresting, almost august figure of the man, not imposing but neither incredibly welcoming even at a distance. It would be hard to convince anyone among the Ranger Corps to cooperate with a man who was both a mage and all but impossible to get a good read on without working as hard as Lor'themar had had to do.

In spite of the afternoon bustle of the city, Dar'khan noticed his hesitation this time, and stopped again to frown at him.

“You… would do that for me, wouldn't you?” Dar'khan asked, and again the brittleness flashed in his eyes for a moment. “I know it's a bit much to ask, but if I tried to approach them…”

Lor'themar tried to imagine Dar'khan approaching one of the other rangers, darkling and standoffish and practically bathed in arcana. The image wasn't a pretty one, no matter which elf he imagined the mage speaking to.

“I can talk to them,” Lor'themar said with another bracing smile. “I'm sure I can find at least a few volunteers.”

And if he couldn't convince them the nice way, Lor'themar decided as Dar'khan cast him a doubtful look and continued on, then he would have no compunctions about reminding them precisely _how_ he had achieved the rank of ranger-lord. Dar'khan was not the sort to ask for favors, and this one that he asked was such a little thing besides. What sort of friend was Lor'themar if he denied the mage even this much?


End file.
